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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24437134">From the point of view of a Ghost</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deirana/pseuds/Deirana'>Deirana</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>"Ablenkungsgeschichten" [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Death, F/M, Ghosts, Love, haunt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:48:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,559</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24437134</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deirana/pseuds/Deirana</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rita, a really nice older lady, realizes that she has died. But life after death is not so easy and the living make it difficult for her to be a ghost. Especially the new tenants of their former apartment are very strenuous.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Marie/Paul, Original Female Character/Original Male Character, Rita/Helmut</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>"Ablenkungsgeschichten" [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764829</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Death of the Old Lady</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This story is one of my "corona stories," or distraction stories. These stories have nothing to do with the virus. It doesn't happen in the stories. But that's why I called this series because, in the time when Life had gone down more or less everywhere because of Corona, I was distracted by writing and some stories came out.<br/>I published the stories in FF.de in German under my name "Deira". Here at AO3 I have summarized them as a series.</p><p>These are more or less creepy horror stories. Some are really evil, others rather harmless. I wish you a lot of fun reading.</p><p>This story is rather harmless. A nice ghost story.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>Rita Clausen was tired. The seventy-five-year-old widow and mother of two sons far from her sat down on her favourite spot on the balcony and closed her eyes.</p>
<p>Here she had always felt very comfortable and many times she was in this place in her comfortable deckchair under her parasol.</p>
<p>So it happened this time, but she didn't wake up....</p>
<p>At least not as she was used to. She opened her eyes and sat down. She was surprised that it was so easy. After all, she suffered from one or two woes, probably because of her age.</p>
<p>So her back was very difficult in the last time and her doctor wanted to give her a new hip joint, but she had been able to avoid this until now. She had no desire to go under the knife again at her age and feared that she would be worse off afterwards.</p>
<p>But now she had no problems getting up. She had last made it so quickly and easily years ago, when she was much younger.</p>
<p>She stood on her balcony and thought that her flowers needed to be watered urgently. Then her gaze fell on her deckchair – and she was terrified.</p>
<p>In the chair sat an old lady and smiled peacefully. She wore the same floral dress as Rita and she came up with a terrible suspicion. That's exactly how she had looked at herself in the mirror in the morning.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Was she asleep this time and didn't wake up?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Rita looked down at her hands and wondered that they were no longer wrinkled, as was the case with the old lady in the deckchair.</p>
<p>She reached for a strand of hair and pulled on it. Her hair was brown, it was the brown she had in her youth. </p>
<p>The Rita in the deckchair had red colored hair to cover the grey. She had always liked this color. But it was nice to see the old brown again.</p>
<p>"I think I've died," Rita thought, annoyed.</p>
<p>In fact, she had been quite satisfied with her life. While it was a pity that she rarely saw her sons and her only granddaughter, they phoned regularly and her granddaughter had set up this new-fashionable way to talk to her via video chat on her computer.</p>
<p>They had used this many times and in this way Lotta had introduced her to her first boyfriend...</p>
<p>In addition, she had regularly gone with friends from the seniors meeting Essen and had taken bus trips with them to the surrounding area. They often met for coffee in the apartment of one of the pensioners. </p>
<p>"Seventy-five is actually too early for me," she said in a slightly bad mood. "That could have been ten or fifteen more years."</p>
<p>But it couldn't be changed, even if the neighbor, who had a key, quickly became aware of the body sitting motionless and called an ambulance. Paramedics and paramedics were still trying to find her body, but it was clearly too late.</p>
<p>Sadly, the doctor told the sobbing neighbor and Rita would have liked to comfort her and the doctor, who seemed rather unhappy. It was too early to die and she was still annoyed about it, but neither of them needed to make any accusations.</p>
<p>The doctor had done his job properly and the neighbour had reacted quickly enough when she noticed the rainless Rita from her own balcony.</p>
<p>A few days later, the funeral took place and Rita found that one could have quietly chosen a prettier urn. Probably her mischigre-looking daughter-in-law had prevailed. But on the other hand, the thing was buried in the earth anyway, and except for an archaeologist who might eventually dig it out, probably no one would ever care.</p>
<p>So there was no reason to be annoyed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Surprisingly many mourners had appeared next to their family, several neighbors and their friends from the seniors meeting. She even thought she recognized a few former school friends. </p>
<p>But they all looked so old by now, and she had last seen them at the graduation ceremony nearly sixty years ago. Everyone had changed a lot.</p>
<p>Rita was delighted with the sympathy. Apparently she had been quite popular, but her stingy daughter-in-law was shocked that they now had to pay more for the coffee gossip that took place after the funeral.</p>
<p>Rita gave her a slight pat on the back of the head and the stingy grabbed the spot. "Oh, who was that?" she asks us, but of course she didn't see anyone.</p>
<p>Rita, on the other hand, knew that she could touch and move the living and things, as she spent the funeral repeatedly putting her daughter-in-law's handbag in a different place and watching her look for it.</p>
<p>Otherwise it was actually a pretty nice funeral and people talked about it well. Her granddaughter cried and was comforted by her boyfriend, a nice young man, and Rita would have liked to have taken the girl in her arms again. But she didn't want to scare her.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But then something happened that really annoyed her. Because her family began to clean up her lovingly furnished apartment. All the beautiful furniture was removed and it only comforted her that Lotta would put a few of them in her own apartment, which she had just set up with her boyfriend.</p>
<p>At one point, she was standing in an empty apartment. She remembered moving in with her husband Helmut many years ago. She also wondered why Helmut had not yet picked her up and brought her into the afterlife.</p>
<p>Or was there no such thing at all?</p>
<p>But it was to get worse, because shortly afterwards, Rita had wandered through her empty apartment for a few days, a young couple moved in. She had nothing against young people. But they didn't like them from the first moment, because they started painting the walls in an ugly neon green.</p>
<p>Each room was provided with this color and then they had a terrible taste in music.</p>
<p>Rita could have come to terms with that, but unfortunately they always turned her system so far that even Rita's ghost ears roared and she got ghostly headaches.</p>
<p>Neighbours also felt disturbed, because a few times in the next time even the police were at the door.</p>
<p>The young couple's taste in furnishings also left much to be desired. The furniture radiated the cosiness of a dental practice and her cuddly sofa had been swapped for a steel frame with a small seat.</p>
<p>The two didn't seem to think much of work because they were sitting at home all day, and they also left their cigarette butts and empty pizza boxes everywhere. The whole apartment stank of cold cigarette smoke and rotting pizza.</p>
<p>When the new residents also painted the walls of the balcony in neon green, it was enough for the ghost lady. </p>
<p>She would evict the couple from her apartment using ghostly haunting experiences and hoped that she would be more lucky with the next tenants. </p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The end</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rita started her first scare attempt in the evening. The couple once again sat on the uncomfortable sofa and heard the grisly loud music. The man, Paul, smoked a cigarette and actually dropped the ashes on the parquet floor, which she had always so lovingly cleaned.</p>
<p>His girlfriend, Marie, sat next to him and ate a pizza again.</p>
<p>Rita shook her head and thought that the young woman was already so fat. Why didn't she buy a delicious salad when it had to be food from the delivery service? </p>
<p>But she could still have come to terms with her eating habits....</p>
<p>"You, Pauli, we could paint the ceiling pink. That certainly fits well with the green," she suggested, and Paul nodded. "Yes, we do. And make the music louder. I don't hear anything.'</p>
<p>"Oh no," Rita thought as Marie turned up the complex, which was right next to the ugly sofa. </p>
<p>The ghost lady simply pressed the switch-off button and Paul started coughing. Marie slapped him on the back. </p>
<p>"I'll do it again," she said, but Rita had already pulled the plug. Confused, the young woman looked at her boyfriend. 'It's weird. If the light goes out now, then I believe in ghosts."</p>
<p>"It's easier than I thought," Rita said. </p>
<p>Perhaps it would be easier to evict these residents of the ugly doctor's office apartment with the green walls and pizza boxes than she had thought.</p>
<p>"Your wish be my command," she muttered softly, turning off the light.</p>
<p>Poor Marie screamed and Paul came up as he got up to turn the lights back on against the pizza box. The contents fell to the ground. </p>
<p>Eventually, the living room was bathed in bright light again, but not for long. </p>
<p>Rita again operated the light switch and Paul uttered an unflattering curse, for which Rita would have rebuked her sons earlier.</p>
<p>"You don't say anything like that," she thought indignantly, while Paul turned on the lights again.</p>
<p>"Do you think it's haunting?" asked Marie in an anxious voice, but Paul shook his head. "Such a quark. You see too much nonsense on TV. Look at a bit more football. You learn more."</p>
<p>Marie remained silent and picked up her pizza from the floor.</p>
<p>She bit into the fallen piece and Rita shook her head.</p>
<p>Somehow the woman almost made her feel a little sorry. She herself would never have eaten pizza from the ground. But she had also been much more prickly in such matters, and her husband, Helmut, had sometimes made fun of it.</p>
<p>She sighed inwardly. Actually, now after her death, she would like to see Helmut again. It might soon be trying to do so. She was a ghost, so Helmut was certainly one. But where was he? </p>
<p>Was he in heaven? Probably not in hell.</p>
<p>He had some unpleasant qualities. So he had cut his toenails sometimes in the living room and he hadn't always brought the garbage out when she told him. He had also always brought her the wrong yoghurts from the purchase.</p>
<p>She was annoyed by these things. But in their opinion he did not deserve hell, because it had not been so bad.</p>
<p>Perhaps he spent such a good time in heaven that he had not even noticed that she had died. Well, until he noticed, she would spend time with this horrible couple.</p>
<p>That night, she entered the couple's bedroom. She pulled away the duvets and placed them on the sofa in the living room. Then she waited until Paul awoke. "Where's my blanket?" he whined. "I'm cold.</p>
<p>The light went on in the bedroom and Marie also woke up. "Where's my blanket?"</p>
<p>They seemed to be looking for the duvets in the bedroom for a while and Rita giggled in front of her. </p>
<p>Eventually Paul entered the living room and saw the duvets lying on the sofa.</p>
<p>"How do they get there? That's really too crazy. Did you do that, Marie? Very funny."</p>
<p>"I wasn't," Marie lamented from the bedroom.</p>
<p>Paul took the blankets and returned to the bedroom, where Marie again expressed her concerns about a possible haunting. Again, Paul didn't want to know about it.</p>
<p>Rita hoped the two wouldn't really argue. Because that's not what she really wanted. She just wanted them to leave.</p>
<p>Over the next few days, Rita played pranks on the two of them again and again, but only if one of them was alone. So she wanted to avoid accusing each other.</p>
<p>For example, she hid Paul's socks after showering and put them in the fridge. Then she put Marie's lipstick in her favorite coffee cup. Unfortunately, all these pranks were of no use and the two began to paint the balcony in ugly green color a week later.</p>
<p>Rita would have preferred to have taken the bucket and put Paul over her head, but she did not do so, because this might have ruined the balcony tiles.</p>
<p>She left the balcony because she could no longer see Paul squandering the beautiful balcony on which she had spent so many comfortable hours in her deckchair. The sight was just too sad and she wondered how it came about that a person had such a bad taste.</p>
<p>In the evening, Paul and Marie, having once again heard the grisly loud music, had gone to bed, thinking about how she might annoy them. At the same time, she seemed a little vicious.</p>
<p>She was sitting on the horrible sofa when she heard steps that appeared familiar to her. But it wasn't Paul who went to the toilet or Marie sneaking to the fridge to get a midnight snack.</p>
<p>Instead, when she looked up, she saw a man in her mid-twenties in front of her. She had known him for a long time, she had actually known him for a large part of her life. But the last time she saw him, he had been much older.</p>
<p>Only the smile with which he thought of her now had been the same.</p>
<p>"Helmut," she said, and stood up. "You came by to look for me. And you look good. Like when we met."</p>
<p>Helmut, her husband, who died years ago, reached for her hand and gave her another smile.</p>
<p>"You also look like the day we first met. I'm sorry I'm so late. I wanted to come earlier. But All the time I felt like you'd like to stay a little bit to annoy this couple.'</p>
<p>"Well, did you see our balcony?" asked Rita, and Helmut nodded sadly. </p>
<p>"It's horrible, I agree with you. But this is now the apartment of the two. Let them set up as they please. They will probably have to deal with the property management soon anyway. But that's no longer our problem!"</p>
<p>Rita had to agree to this, but she didn't know what to do next.</p>
<p>"Where can we go?" she asked, a little anxious. 'Hopefully you're not in hell. And hopefully I don't have to go there, don't I?"</p>
<p>Helmut laughed. "Of course not. All that's going to be there is criminals. We may enter into a beautiful afterlife. It's really not a bad thing. And we can see what our guys and Lotta are doing. And then at some point there are different possibilities for us, from rebirth to longer stays in the afterlife. We have a say in that...".</p>
<p>He put an arm around her shoulders and pressed it on herself. "We have to leave the apartment. When we walk through the door, we enter the next world. Are you ready? I also hold your hand all the time."</p>
<p>He looked at her and she remembered that he had once asked her to go out with him for the first time with the same gaze.</p>
<p>She nodded and Helmut opened the front door. A warm light seemed to welcome her and, hand in hand, Rita and Helmut left the apartment, whose walls were now painted in an ugly neon green....</p>
<p>The warm light surrounded her and Rita saw a beautiful landscape in front of her, while Helmut still held her hand. They had lived their lives and it had actually been a good life. Perhaps one day they would decide to rebirth and start a new life.</p>
<p>She hoped that she and Helmut could be together again.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>End</strong>
</p>
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